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After the Alloy of Law I had the feeling of having a good idea where the era is going. With it being the start of an entire series, of course those things would be important but self-contained within Scadrial. Exploring its current culture and world, setting some stepping stones for its future development (without completely reshaping the world again), building up a final confrontation with the Set and the most important thing at the end of something along the lines of the Set’s breeding program explaining why there are Mistborn again in the next era. Then there’s some foreshadowing for elements such as the Scadrial civil war and possible of world interference. After Shadows of Self I’m not so sure anymore. I suppose it started with the title. Given that it is very much an already established term certain expectations came with it, at least for me. Not that those matter anymore, given the actual book had fairly little to do with cognitive shadows. What we got instead was naturally also very good but headed into a direction I did not see coming and I wonder if it will continue in that direction. Miles’ warning/threat at the end of Alloy could be taken as something only coming into fruition with the next era but now with Trell being so aggressive in supporting/manipulation Paalm I would find it rather unsatisfying if it never came up again. Furthermore, the Set was reduced to essentially a cameo, certainly not adding to a build up for a confrontation. So I wonder what you people think. Do you think era 2 will turn out to have greater Cosmere implications and deal with whatever off world threat actually hides behind Trell or if Trell will just kind of take a backseat and if they deal with it in any major way, do you think such an event with rather Cosmere important consequences was originally meant to be skipped over or only added in with this new set of books? Will they deal with both Trell and the Set in the following two books or might the Set actually turn out to be not as important, with maybe only the plot around Wax’s family member getting resolved? Another thing in a similar vein, these first two book titles have been rather esoteric, referring to the book’s themes and not so much the actual plot. Yet, the other two titles we have been given, Bands of Mourning and The Lost Metal, seem to directly refer specific objects in the world, which makes the wonder, are they actually that straight forward or are they decoys and something different turns out to be the meaning behind them. For example bands of Mourning having a theme of people being brought together by mourning a common loss.